Making the List object compatible with post data from frontend in ASP.NET MVC3

I have the following controller that I am posting to in a form via AJAX:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(List<int> listOfSTuff)
{
    try
    {
        service.Create(listOfSTuff);
    }
    catch
    {
        return null;
    }
    return Json(new { gid = 7 }); // hardcoded for simplicity
}

I am having a hard time with my jQuery AJAX post making the List data type compatible with the post data. Here is my jQuery/JavaScript code:

var listOfStuff = [1, 2, 3];

$.ajax({
    type: 'POST',
    url: '/MyController/Create',
    data: listOfStuff,
    success: function(data) {
        alert(data.gid);
    },
    error: alert(':('),
    dataType: 'json'
});

I know that the AJAX post to the controller is working because I get a gid but I do no开发者_开发知识库t see the array elements 1 or 2 or 3 saved in the database. It does not appear that the controller likes my JavaScript array that is being passed over. Can anyone suggest how the data structure should look like from the frontend to make it compatible with the List that the controller action is expecting?

Make your listOfStuff declared as such:

var listOfStuff = {postedValues: [1, 2, 3]};

It works better to format your posted data as a proper JSON object before posting it to the controller. so now:

data: listOfStuff, will post a proper JSON string

and change the parameter name in your Controller to be:

[HttpPost] 
public ActionResult Create(List<int> postedValues) 
{ 
} 

Hope it works for you.

It turns out that I was missing a critical parameter in the jQuery AJAX call that makes this work:

There is a traditional attribute that is false by default but it has to be set to true which uses the traditional style of param serialization.